Chapter 24
“ Y ou have to talk to me at some point. Alan keeps calling.” Staring out at the city and seeing none of it, my mother’s voice breaks through the near-meditative trance I’ve been sitting in. “He knows you’re back and he’s insisting you come to the office.”
Nothing new. Alan’s always insisting on something. I remember our bargain and the promise I made to come hand it all over to him, but I can’t get my body to move. It’s so heavy. The fog of being back here the last few days feels like cinder blocks dragging me down feet first.
“Matt… talk to me. I’ve never seen you like this. What happened in Italy?”
She sits beside me on the couch and rests her hand on my knee, long, manicured nails against the simple fabric of my pants. Genevieve Palmer has always been so elegant. I look at her then, taking in the fine lines beside her mouth and eyes, the start of age that she’s fought so hard to combat. Her blue eyes were ones I’d wished for as a kid.
My brown hair and eyes always seemed so dull, especially with a mother like her. Blazing blue, like a flame so hot it’s cold. Her hair gleams chestnut, thick and straight, not a gray in sight with volume that landed her plenty of hair commercials. I know a lot of it comes from salons but still, I’ve never looked much like my mother. Thomas Palmer put his stamp on me and there was little leeway for anyone else’s genes.
Floor to ceiling windows stretch throughout her living room, the corner delineating two opposing views. Central Park is on one side, the impossible reach of Manhattan’s skyscrapers on the other. Halfway between the ground and the clouds, we sit suspended. Am I the only one that doesn’t like being this high up? Everyone around me seems to relish being part of the sky and all I want is to sink my hands into the earth again.
“It’s been days. If you won’t talk to me then at least…” She takes a deep breath, handing me a business card.
“I made an appointment for you to see someone. I’ll keep Alan off your back for as long as I can but, Matt... it can’t go on like this.”
My mother rises from her perch on the sofa, the warmth of her hand gone.
“Your appointment is in an hour. The driver knows and will be waiting for you downstairs. Please go.”
I say nothing.
“Matt,” she urges, her voice stronger than I’ve heard it before. She never was one to raise her voice, to discipline. The moments I had with her growing up were always too distant for that. It’s enough for me to drag my gaze to meet hers. My eyes feel like sandpaper, every blink painful. When’s the last time I took a shower?
“ Promise me .”
There’s no denying her, not when she’s agreed to let me live here after the loft’s taken away. That’s the answer I gave her. Not the fact that I have nowhere else to go and I haven’t had the courage to go back to my loft where I’ll be truly alone.
“I promise,” I say and it feels weird, the words clumsy and thick coming out of my mouth. Days without speaking will do that. Fuck, I should brush my teeth.
“I’ll see you tonight for dinner.” Gathering her stuff into a small purse, she slings the strap over her shoulder and puts on a pair of sunglasses that probably cost more than the fucking Vespa. She’s trying. Now it’s my turn.
I drag my body through a shower and clothe myself in the first things I can find that make sense, and sit in the silence of the apartment. Spoon clinking against a bowl of cereal, I force myself to breathe as deeply as I can. The bran feels like chewing sticks but my stomach is glad for the sustenance. My mother’s pulled me from my little cotton wool haze and now I’m noticing just how fucked the last few days have been—how deep I’ve sunk into myself. It’s been almost a week since I drove the dirt road away from Abundantia and I haven’t heard a word from any of them.
My phone has been a minefield of “friends” I haven’t spoken to in months, who never check in, never ask, suddenly giving a fuck. It’s also Alan and his threats. A few places have reached out for comment but hopefully this thing will fade with the next big story.
Still, nothing from them. Not sure why I expected anything else, but hope is hard to squash.
The car ride is short and the therapist’s office not what I expected. Instead of a sleek medical-looking building, it’s a townhome; a brownstone, aged by time and the weather. The driver finds somewhere to park and it dawns on me that he’s going to have to sit and wait for me.
I’ve never thought about it before, the people tangential to my life that I’ve ignored, barely noticed.
“What’s your name?” I ask.
Glancing up from the newspaper he’s unfolded in front of the steering wheel, he makes eye contact with me in the rearview mirror. “Clyde. Clyde Adams.”
“Thank you for driving me, Clyde. Appreciate it.”
His eyebrows twitch once, like he needs a second to absorb what I’ve said.
“No problem, Mr. Palmer. I’ll be out here if you need anything.”
I walk on leaden legs up the steps, read the little sign asking me to ring the doorbell for entry, and wait. So much of my life is going to feel like waiting now.Just passing time until it stops meaning anything.
“Hi, how can we help you?” comes through the electronic doorbell.
“Matte—uh, Matt Palmer, I have an appointment.”
A few moments later a young woman opens the door for me, gesturing that I follow her inside and toward an office near the back garden. Inside what looks more like a study than an office is a bowed head with long, salt-and-pepper hair, engrossed in writing notes.
“Mr. Palmer to see you,” my escort says from the doorway before walking away and the therapist nods for me to join her in the room.
“Shut the door behind you and come take a seat, Mr. Palmer.”
“Please, don’t call me that, my first name’s fine.”
“Okay then, Matt. I’m Dr. Pritchard. What brings you in today?”
“My mom made me an appointment?” I phrase it as a joke, the question going up at the end and even I can tell the facade is wearing thin.
“Be that as it may, you still showed up and she was concerned enough to make an appointment for you. Is there anything specific you’d like to bring up or would you prefer we go over some of your history first?”
“I guess I’ve been a little ‘off’ lately.” I stare down at my hands in my lap, fingers tightly-laced, skin white where it's being squeezed. “I lost someone I was close to and I’ve been having a hard time with it, I suppose.”
You’re having a fucking ball. What did you expect when you fucked everything up? Did you really think she’d forgive you for lying to her over and over?”
“Ah. Yes, I’d heard about your father’s passing. My condolences.”
Jerked from reminiscing about Giuliana, I look up at her, confused for a second. “No. No, that’s not what this is about!” It’s stronger than I intend, almost offended.
Dr. Pritchard tilts her head as she assesses me, and I’m reminded of Isabella’s fathomless gaze. It’s a look that says she sees so much more than just what’s presented on the surface.
“Isn’t it? Tell me then.”
And so, I launch into it as briefly as I can: the contract, the trip, the lies compounding and growing—snowballing until it swept away the life I want more than anything else.
“Why do you think you kept the secret from her? It sounds like there might be something else there, not just you avoiding getting caught.”
“At first it was me being stubborn, selfish, but then I didn’t want to lose her. And once I was caught up in it all I didn’t want to let them down.”
“Them?”
“Giuliana and her family.”
“Did you ever feel like you were letting your family in New York down?”
“Growing up or with the company and the grove? Because I know I’ve been failing them for years. Some of it willful, some of it was me chafing at their expectations.”
“You say you know . Did they ever tell you that? What makes you feel like that?”
How the hell did we get so off track? We’re just supposed to be talking about my fuck-up with Giuliana. I’m going through a breakup here and it’s tearing me apart. Clearly now’s not the time to bring up the man who ruined my life with his anticipations and demands. I almost want to interrupt her and tell her that, refuse to answer, but the truth is easier. I’m too tired to fight.
“My father expected me to take over the business. Had a whole clause written into his will to disown me if I didn’t make a success of myself.”
“Have you seen this clause? That sounds very extreme.”
“No… uh, my mentor Alan—his right-hand-man, told me about it while I was in Italy. I haven’t been to see him yet given my—mood. But from what he said either I take over the grove and prove I have what it takes to run the company, or I lose my inheritance.”
“So, you lost both the grove and your inheritance? And the connection you’d made with this family.”
“Yeah, hence why my mom made the appointment for me. Needless to say, I’ve been a little numb—very little pep in my step these days.”
“Were you close with your father?”
“No. He was busy with work and growing his empire.”
“Do you think you resent the business for taking him away from you?”
“Probably.”
“When you were a kid or now, in death?”
Fuck. I’ve never connected the two but that makes sense.
“Both?”
“Do you resent your father for not being there for you, not taking the time to get to know you and what you wanted?”
“Yeah. We’ve never been on the best terms, which is why I’m not surprised by the move he pulled. Keeping it a secret was a shitty thing to do, though.”
“Matt, I don’t want to agitate you when you clearly want nothing to do with your father’s business but I do suggest you look into that clause on the will. Take it to a lawyer, get a second opinion. Is there a reason you’re taking Alan’s word as law when you haven’t even laid eyes on it?”
“I mean, it sounded like something my dad would do. He’d been pestering me for years, why not try to force my hand?”
Her questions are a barrage, forcing me to think on things I’ve never even considered. Given how I’ve trudged through the last few days this conversation feels like a tennis match, balls volleyed back and forth. As soon as I answer she serves me another question I’d rather avoid. Picking at the chair I’m sitting on, I try to ground myself in the physical space. Her office. I’m in her office and I’ve got to focus on that.
“Matt, how could he have known when he was going to die? Without the heart attack he might have had another twenty years and died an old man, a grandfather even? Do you believe he thought you’d have nothing to show for yourself your whole life ?”
The words sink into the abyss of my chest like stones clattering over themselves and tumbling to the bottom. I mull it over and consider what my father may have thought of me.
“Yeah, I did. I do. But how can I reconcile that man with the man who helped Giuliana’s father? That person left them alone despite having sunk money into a business venture. He paid for my writing degree, even though it wasn’t in the field he would have preferred. There are these glimpses of a man I didn’t know—someone I wish I had gotten to before he died. But it’s too late now. I know I disappointed him but I’m not sure if that’s all he saw me as.”
Don’t try to kid yourself, you’ve always been a disappointment.
“What’s going on? You just tensed up and you seem to be preoccupied about something. Tell me.”
“I… uh, I have this voice inside me that talks to me?”
It sounds fucking ridiculous. Who doesn’t have an internal voice? People talk to themselves all the time. Right?
Wrong. It’s deluded. You’re walking around with a pocket asshole in your mind and you spend so much time telling me to shut up you don’t even wonder why I’m here in the first place. Your brain is fucked, dude.
“And what does this voice say?”
Go on. Tell her how messed up you are.
“Nothing good. Most of it is pretty fucking shitty actually. It just pops up and I’ve kind of gotten used to it. I call it my companion because it won’t go away. It’s mean.”
“Mean to you?”
“Yeah.”
“How long has it been around?”
Casting my mind back, I try to pinpoint it but it’s hard to sift through weeks of internal abuse. It popped up during the funeral, after I heard Alan call my dad a good riddance. The voice agreed.
“Maybe a year?”
“And is it just the voice? What does it tell you?”
Here we go. I’m about to get shrunk.
“Mostly hateful stuff toward myself. Negative. That I’m a worthless sack of shit and nothing I do means anything. The occasional feeling that it might be better if I wasn’t around. There’s been some physical stuff as well.”
“Like?” She drags it out, clearly onto the fact that I’m trying to procrastinate this entire conversation or avoid it entirely if I can.
“Trouble breathing, shakiness, heart racing, dizziness, kind of your general panic. I ended up doing a lot of drinking and vaping to deal with it. Worked sometimes.” I shrug, trying to play it off.
“Same length of time?” Looking up from my fisted hands, I notice she’s writing on her notepad, scribbling as I speak. Great . That can only be a good sign.
“Yes, I guess.”
“And are you still smoking and drinking to help with dulling the voice and the feelings?”
The question is innocuous but it shines a light on how ineffective my coping strategies were. The vaping and drinking and partying did absolutely fuck all to help me. If anything, it added a level of physical pain and anxiety that made it easier to ignore the emotional side of things. But once those things were gone, I still struggled.
“No. Not for a little while now. At least not consistently.”
Dr. Pritchard jots it down and it feels strange to see someone take stock of my life like that. Little scratches on a paper attest to how fucked up I might or might not be.
“Anything significant happen about a year ago?” It’s a leading question. I’ve seen enough courtroom dramas to know this is a trap. There’s no way. It can’t be connected.
“Uh… my father passed away.”
Pritchard stops writing, looks at me—sees me. I’m bouncing my leg, hands balled up. I feel like a caged animal, under scrutiny in a zoo. The enclosure is too small and keeps getting smaller the longer I sit here under her eye. Dr. Pritchard pushes her glasses up the bridge of her nose and takes a deep breath before talking.
“Grief is a funny thing.”
“What are you talking about?”
“May I be frank with you? And possibly unprofessional? Because I don’t know if you’re going to come back.”
“Sure, doc. Go ahead.” Lay it all out for me.
“You’ve grown up in an environment of neglect and abandonment that you’ve blamed on yourself your whole life because none of the adults took accountability. When your father died it was just another kind of abandonment, but this time you weren’t to blame and you didn’t have the tools to deal with a grief you didn’t want to feel. Mourning someone who hurt you felt like a betrayal to yourself. He didn’t deserve your grief and you couldn’t control that feeling, so you shoved it down and what came back up was different—pointed inward.”
Swallowing hard, my Adam’s apple bobs in my throat, impossibly thick.
“That cycle of internal blame is hard to break. So, when something profound came in to disrupt the only constant feeling in your life, you may have felt out of control. Hence the panic, hence the voice trying to blame and shame you at every turn. You’ve been trying to regain an environment you’re familiar with even though it’s a harmful one.”
Out of control is a pretty apt descriptor for how I’ve been feeling, especially when my body betrays me.
“You could have come clean in Italy and told the truth. But you wanted to avoid failure—avoid feeling like you were a disappointment and it was all your fault. You didn’t want to be left again. So, you lied. And as those relationships grew you kept lying, even though you knew it could only end badly. Because that’s the default: badly. You’re in this pattern of self-destruction and blame because that’s your comfort zone.”
Pritchard pauses, watching me, waiting for the words to sink in. It takes my mind a minute to catch up and process what she’s listing out. It resonates. Hard. I’ve never thought about it this way or known how to talk about it. Now she’s cataloging my whole life in such clear terms I feel stupid for not realizing it sooner.
“I just want to fix it. I want to go back and change everything and never be in this place. Because it fucking sucks. My whole life feels alien to me. I don’t know where I fit anymore. I wanted Italy. I wanted Giuliana and stability and family and joy. I’d never had that—never even realized how badly I needed it until I found it there.”
Pushing a box of tissues toward me, she nods and I realize I must be crying. My face is wet. When did that happen?
“And I can’t. I can’t do any of those things.” The words are shaky, broken up by little catches from my crying.
“Now you’re dealing with your grief, for real. Not pretending it doesn’t exist. You’ve allowed yourself to feel for them, to care and love, and grieving that kind of loss is hard. The feelings you ignored around your father are coming back up and it’s compounding. It’s going to take time.”
I sniff, wipe the hot salt from my cheeks. “What can I do? I can’t change the situation but what can I do about the mess inside of me? I don’t want to be like this. I’m so tired of feeling like this. I hate my brain and it hates me, and that can’t be what the rest of my life is going to be like, right?”
“You can come here and put in the work by sorting through your feelings and finding healthy coping mechanisms. You mentioned a writing degree. You could try and journal to untangle some of what you’re feeling, and face it. Fear and avoidance aren’t a good combination when it comes to healing.”
I could try and journal.
Journal.
My journal. Fuck. It’s in that desk drawer, in Italy.
Pritchard’s still talking though so I force myself to tune back in despite the flare of dread shooting through my body at the thought.
“You chose to help that family, despite what was on the line for you. Knowing it would have made you look like a ‘failure’ according to your father’s supposed clause, you did it anyway. You’re already trying to break the cycle and become the person I think you want to be deep down.”
I can do nothing but nod.
“So, homework for next week. Ask to see that will and the clause, get a second opinion. You don’t need to punish yourself for doing the right thing, even if you went about it the wrong way. And maybe try to write a little, get it out of your head. Okay?”
“Okay.” I can do that. I should do that. Even if I get nothing from the will, at least I can say I tried and fought.
“Next week, same time then.”
Rising from my seat, I push out of the chair and try to ignore the scrape of it against the wooden flooring.
“See you, Dr. Pritchard.”
“Robin. You can call me Robin. Take care of yourself, Matt.”
My mind races, trying to think of where to start to settle back into a body that’s been working against me for a while now. First in panic and now in apathy. I pause in the doorway—my hand wrapped around the knob and turn back. “I’d prefer Matteo actually.”
She gives me a smile and a nod. “Take care, Matteo.”
Robin’s given me a purpose, at least a short term one. There’s so much to sort through, so many questions I need to ask myself. Firstly, why I haven’t mourned my dad and how that’s been affecting me.
So, I’ll start there, with him. With the will and my part in it.
Settling into the town car, Clyde heads us back to the apartment. If there’s anyone with experience in dealing with Alan and going up against my father where the law is concerned, it’ll be my mom.